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The vitamin lady's secret

There are plenty of news stories about the benefits of vitamins, but those stories never mention the "vitamin lady." Paul Ford of Hammond, Wis. shared the vitamin lady's secret with me many years ago, and now I'll share it with you.

I was worn out when I met the vitamin lady. She asked me if I used vitamins, and if not, I should visit her sometime. After several visits she asked me if I was a Christian. I told her yes.

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"Well, I go to church every Sunday, I don't drink or smoke and I believe in God."

"Do you think that will get you somewhere?" she said. She tried to get me to attend Bible studies, but I always had something better to do.

Then one day I started getting a terrible pain in my knee. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong, but the pain grew worse. Soon I was in the hospital, and the vitamin lady's friends from church came and prayed for me. They came by the carloads and filled my room every night. They almost had to take a number to see me.

One of the girls from the church wanted my son to come to a special service the next Friday. My son wanted to go, so I told him I'd take him if my knee improved.

"Something fishy is going on here," my doctor told me when he examined my knee two days before the service. "There's no swelling, no pain, and you can almost walk with crutches. I guess you can go to that service."

At one point during the sermon at that service, the preacher asked: "How many of you know Jesus?" People who knew Jesus were supposed to raise their hand and come forward. I raised my hand, but then the pain in my knee resurfaced after five days of being pain-free. The pain was almost unbearable. I couldn't go forward.

The preacher said those people who raised their hands but didn't come forward should read a certain verse in the Bible and then pray about it when they got home. By the time I did get home, the pain was so bad I even thought about praying. By the next morning I was still sitting in my reclining chair with my leg elevated. I should read that Bible verse, I thought to myself, but how am I going to find a Bible when I can't even get out of the chair?

All of a sudden, the sweetest voice I had ever heard said to me, "It's beside your chair." Cold chills went up my spine and I felt very hot.

"I thought I was the only one in the house," I said. "Where are you?"

This voice said to me, "I'm up here."

Then I saw Jesus standing in front of me dressed in a white robe. You can't imagine the warm feeling I had. I prayed to Jesus that very moment and asked him to come into my life and to forgive the things I had done in the past.

"You are forgiven," he said.

My whole life changed in a split second. Now Jesus is my partner and friend. It's been 22 years since that day, and my kneecap has never bothered me since. The vitamin lady and her friends knew that prayers are more powerful than vitamins.

"Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results." James 5:16 (New Living Translation)